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Merge pull request #730 from bressler1995/open-science-101
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Address feedback for global cooling example in Module 1, Lesson 1
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bressler95tops authored May 17, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -99,7 +99,9 @@ In this section, we will look at an example of how closed science can restrict r

<img src="../images/media/image220.png" style="width: 100%; height: auto;"/>

A 1990 analysis of satellite data on climate temperature concluded that the upper atmosphere experienced no warming, a finding that contradicted early climate models predictions. Policymakers concluded from this result that researchers don't understand climate models enough to warrant changes in environmental policy. The processed data from this study were made open-access but, as was typical for the time, neither the original data nor the code used for processing and analyzing the data were shared by the original research team. Eight years after the article was published, other scientists noticed that the original authors didn't account for several important effects. This oversight introduced errors into the dataset and falsely produced artificial cooling to the temperature measurements. It took another five years and additional funding to reproduce the code and conduct a new analysis. Thirteen years after the original paper, it was confirmed that the upper atmosphere was warming and agreed with climate model predictions.
A 1990 analysis of satellite data on climate temperature concluded that the upper troposphere experienced no warming, a finding that contradicted early climate models predictions. Policymakers concluded from this result that researchers don't understand climate models enough to warrant changes in environmental policy. The processed data from this study were made open-access but, as was typical for the time, neither the original data nor the code used for processing and analyzing the data were shared by the original research team. Eight years after the article was published, other scientists noticed that the original authors didn't account for several important effects. This oversight introduced errors into the dataset and falsely produced artificial cooling to the temperature measurements. It took another five years and additional funding to reproduce the code and conduct a new analysis. Thirteen years after the original paper, it was confirmed that the upper troposphere was warming and agreed with climate model predictions.

*Note: Learn about the layers of Earth's atmosphere [here](https://www.sciencefacts.net/layers-of-atmosphere.html).*

The inability for the scientific community to access an article’s original data and code slows the pace of discovery, thirteen years in this case, and forces other research teams to repeat the work (code) instead of moving on to new projects. This isn't the pace that we want to advance science, with one step forward and two steps back to iterate and resolve problems.

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